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SAWTC2018 - South African Wine Tasting Champs - Cape Town leg

3 June 2018

The race is on again for the top tasters in SA and Zim for 2018. There was plenty of interest and the room was abuzz with energy at The Taj Hotel for the Cape Town leg, held on Sat 2 June 2018. There was much banter about tickets already booked to go to France in Oct to participate in the World Blind Wine Tasting Champs - this year to be held in Beziers in the south west of France.

This competition is going from strength to strength and one of the wonderful things to see is real transformation in the education and wine consumption sector.At many award ceremonies and launch lunches, it is largely still very pale and often male, but at this tasting competition, the competitor demographic was very different. Young, old, winemakers, young sommeliers, wine stewards, PR people, marketers, restaurant managers, keen consumers, black, white - everyone was represented.I was also pleased to see a number of alumni from the PYDA (Pinotage Youth Development Academy), as well as Cellar Assistants who have done really well at Winetech Study Groups, WineTraining SA and SKOP, honing their skills.A great delight and surprise was having Erica and John Platter at the event, who have been great supporters of TeamZim. Erica talks fondly of herself as their honorary grandmother!

#TeamSA2017 nd #TeamZim2017 were there to defend their titles of course, but in fact 2017 Team Zim are already going to France, but not necessarily to compete, but to complete the filming of the documentary of their extraordinary lives and achievements. Look out for the release in 2019.

Team Cape Town will be announced on Monday 4th June, and the Gauteng leg will be held on the 6th June at the Juliet Cullinan Festival in Johannesburg.The finalists will then compete for the top 4 spots on 1 July - and they will go to France in Oct to compete in the World Blind Wine Tasting Champs.